Undocumented Valentine

Having withdrawn to die
the sick and starving grasses
in the now green gloom
of the moon hung over the river
so you can almost see their eyes
through the branches and will
soon be able to regard
the original plan and layout
of the night’s maze
constructed just for you
first as a chronicle of disaster
scattered groups trying to escape
most later killed with knives
or hung in rows like laundry
and then you lost again
and wandering through
someone else’s life
as if it was your own emerging
from some tangled thicket
or swimming frantically
from shore to shore.

Days of 2000 Valentine

I loved his long red blanket
and to lie under it afternoons
on the cold leather couch
reading of Genji or Virgil’s death
or the moons of Saturn and Venus
I did not lie there alone but
speak now as a survivor
of waves of terror and disbelief
spreading over whole landscapes
their authoritarian glimmerings
heavy things with ears that cut
and stabbed their way to victory
but how by midnight darkness
had overcome it all with rain.

American Valentine

Self-conscious America
sad and repressed America
if you remain in the hands
of your original owners
will soon be determined
and I don’t mean the buildings
but the ego of a woman
to be walked among
or of a man or a child
and not to act like you
never saw these people
before in your life
never spoke to them or
saw how they lived
even when it could
mean their deaths
even when it certainly
does mean their
imminent deaths.

If It Means Something It's Not Poetry Valentine

for Bill

Two bitches diverge
on the narrow bridge
that leads to self-regarding
there’s a yellow sign there
but all you come to
is a sea a sea you must
cross but cannot cross
gold waves of waste
go either way
how could this
possibly be researched
how could dreaming
about it alter the process
when so much reality
keeps trying to recapture
its first self as if
there was another.

Valentine Tucked Into An Old Unread Book

This note
may be
the only
surviving text
of my life you
stranger have
just discovered
please kiss
these words
for me that
they have
found you
or if nothing
sparks just
fold and place
it back where
you found it
I await my
wakener.

Bill's Valentine

Was it his cash karma
he was scanning in
bankrupt short sale to
the lord of lies
only out of an aesthetic
conscience can come
a moral conflagration
my Granada tree
who’s forty-five today
told me yesterday
matter’s not conserved
when it dissolves back
into pure potential
but is transformed
artistically reassembled
into re-enlivened residue
by the thrift store brain
one artifact knows
it takes another.

Stupid's Valentine

It’s the chicken
stupid
not the egg
of death
she laid
who comes first
death’s simply
supplemental
security when
life the chicken
speaks out death
interrupts
divides
we still haven’t
developed
enough of
a sense for
the insides of
the other as
a way past
ourselves
so death
must play
that other dude
that you.

Beach Valentine

All that will end
in the world today
is some sale on women’s
lingerie everything
else continues
as before

except the gassing
at animal shelters
can’t that stop
as well as the killing
of people there are
no innocents none

but it all just continues
in the sinews as before
long days at the beach
the imaginary beach
baking and slicing
and eating the heart.

Fictional Valentine

On the way back in
retrieving the garbage
barrel from the curb
I saw him our new
neighbor one fine-looking
dude dark in a wife-beater
one bright white wife-beater
perhaps having just beaten
something and he said Hello
and I said you’re one fine-
looking human being
on a dark day between
you and me this
could be a novel
except I hate fiction
so if you won’t love
me completely walk away
get in your car
late as usual
and fuck off.

Fugitive's Valentine

The heart’s the only
hide-out in the body
where the blood
can rest can stop
if only for a moment
the idea of surrender
pure genius one moment
separated from another
that it’s not all running
thing to thing
but a laying-in and
and a pouring-off
though the blood just
goes on wanting wanting out
while the heart closes down
opening up somewhere else
a juggler of smoke
and mirroring liquids
only the thinnest veneer
separating the blue
from the red trains
charging off with
opposite convictions.

Days of 2010 Valentine

C’est vrai my heart
hasn’t changed at all
toward you it’s
you’ve just noticed
I don’t love you
like you love you
I understand chagrin
if there were only
a language without
postures and rumors
and writing wasn’t
figure skaters
ice-fishing way out
under Polish stars
I’d tell you that you
don’t really love me
at all as you imagine
it’s how the heart
sniffs and licks
the world touches
its several parts
but lets the blood
slide through.

Remember That The Heart Leaves The Blood Unchanged Valentine

I don’t yet know
enough to save them
but a bird came to my window
so I wouldn’t get discouraged
and now there’s a black fungus
on the Franciscan monk
who discovered these leaves
in song as in disease he
saw a snake eating
his own feet not
normally where they
belong on some infinitely
distant shore but walking
as if in self-cognition
who said he wanted more
self to swallow more dying
to be born.

Pissing Zen Human Valentine

Pee like lightning
thunder close behind
cowboys and Indians
always a few drops
being left human
on the rim of the bowl
I’d wipe them
off and flush
if I were you
I’d conduct a pee
ceremony
the unauthorized
Zen of pissing
that type of now
a bell-like gravity
to the intermittent
stream of golden
thoughts marking
a certain consciousness
of the heart’s
necessary sweat
and grime.

But You Heart Valentine

First we must get
the sniper out
from the tall tower
inside the heart
the self must be
a voluntary structure
inside the bombed-out
apartment building
no one’s debriefed me yet
I was on my way back to talk
to you my game face on
my corridors full of
new and powerful
disappointments
I wanted you to know
how many are called
nothing and have
nothing like me
but you heart
stopping and going
at least you
have a future
are free.

Golden Valentine

All that’s serious
in writing today can only
appear in poems
poems that appear
as independent
physical entities
for poetry the bitchin’ one
to occupy momentarily
or remain empty buildings
locked rooms
where poetry did
once show
or is still expected
any moment to arrive
approached from many
conflicting tides
all we know of poetry
is what comes from
mere poems
so little in so much
like all we know
of gravity or space
comes from crass
reflections of a
knowledge buried
so deeply in plain
sight it’s finding
a few drops of
the golden spring
occasionally or not
would we survive.

Dedicatory Valentine

Woke up early this morning
you woke me up showering
a dream was it of showering
with you first that morning
why so shy you woke me late
too late for showering
but yes I’m empathetic
toward antipathy
what is an antiphany
if not a non-epiphany
whatever you consider
the most beneath you
those bird songs we hear
float out to the farthest
stars I will do it
only to fall back down
on the earth again
as love or late.

Hot Valentine

Terrified as a spider
must be to sit down
quietly addled
beside me
my parachute
having broken his
paraclete having
spoken is there
a bird or dragon
eats spiders
eats men
we call that
summertime
so hot we can’t
even bear
to call it
sunnertime
its real name
anymore.

Saturn And You Return Valentine

Learning to
be alert to
the moment
of his arrival
to stop being hazy
and negotiable
in the way poems
always are
a dry warmth
and a wet wit
to work the sails
before and aft
the slowly-encrusted
waves of his arrival
at any moment
and in retrospect
still present
in every one
of them.

Trojan Valentine

If going forward
I choose not to
lose my aridity
it throws them off
even if formatted to fit
this window ease this rain
the poem is just the screen-play
loved defenestrated
bumped awake by
refusing to see
the end of ‘crass
reality’ what
light encloses
us where blood
running took five days
to evaporate
and still go on.

Anniversary Valentine

What otherwise
would go to build
the flower betimes
gets driven down
into the leaves instead
too soon they seize
the scent and sorrow
of some embodiment
unable or unwilling
to come all the way
into the flesh
but naked on the breeze
can still be used to
flavor and protect
a certain differentiation
of desire tracked
down to this place to find
how all we’ve forgotten
here lies still
ahead of us.

Border Valentine

Maybe these
intimately distant
relationships are all
we’ll be allowed
to manage this time
but somewhere
near the border
in some Mexican bar
I killed an accordion
while leaving the
accordion player
completely unharmed
is there a PETA for
musical instruments
or machines sledge-
hammered I thirsted
for Morton Feldman
but could remain
calm for hours days
only alive thanks to
the ocean Mahler
and you.

Pound's Valentine

Four letter word
for the number
of loves there are
but only one
weight for hate
we are as easy
as an etch-a-sketch
to read
commit to memory
erase
slowly replacing
all our organs
with machines
the worst kind of
royalist romantic
pitch perfect
Ezra
perched like a parrot
on one’s pirate shoulder.

Ass Valentine

How astronomical
the world can be
balls without you
little heart
rhythmic
not beaten
the wine is
spread tonight
from one valve
into another
best served
warmed a little
rotten worm
birthing
at the bottom
of the cosmos
the veritable ass
of the thing
here let me
fill your glass.

Lost Valentine

100 degree
mornings I
hose down the whole
patio into a
swampy escarpment
I sit in the middle
of dripping
gleaming
are we the kinds of
child-geniuses at
failure who stand
on corners yelling
We Want War We Want War
then running off
and getting caught
and beaten
chortles the TV but
whenever I try to reality
return those
lost lives always
the lost thrive more.

Latest Valentine

Trying climbing up
on the tool shed
what does the text
say then pending what
cannot be displayed
you don’t know a thing
crying and laughing
that we can hold
one another and sway
to the same chakra
orchestra that you
have remodeled me
stone and cabinet
stayed and staying
work continues
but yes you have
capped my well.

And We All Know What That Will Be Like Valentine

Laying down
layer upon
layer of silica
we build up
our horns
our petals
what was living
dies into something
sensible and useful
as a listening device
as the forms fall
out of their ideas
as eggs and embryos
to be worked on
to become flexible
as a flower
to a higher
desire.

Summery Valentine

A man is talking to a dog again
as he would to his best friend
while vegetables are falling
through the air behind him

a hot breeze strolls casually
into the morning garden smiling

down inside the earth
a deep blue will is shining

while above clouds take on
the shapes of our mistakes
shooting them through with
a golden intelligence

and rising up from below
a silvery blessing
while from above looks down
a gaze (a dove)
that sifts the soul.

Friendly Valentine

Friend you have
been to me
however glancingly
as on the day they knew
Baldur was dying again
into the cold decadence
darkness snows
and friend I have
been to you
however untrue
as on that day Uriel
lifts his glorious face
above the whole earth
to bless it sternly
once a year and people
feel powerful again
for a few moments
and free as we.

Sapphic Valentine

My eyes feel like
eight-track tapes
my brain is so broken
my feet are standing
in cement buckets
but the crime’s how calm
he is
sitting next to you
while I stand still as a street
for a few moments
every hour in the memory
of your laughter at my pain
finally those two meeting
bumping into one another
and then suddenly
changing places
like death was
waiting nearby.

Research Valentine

If I cut back
the mint and
the marjoram and
throw the trimmings
on the grave of the
tomatoes does it
conceivably affect
the taste ahead of
time can words
be made to leap
across the chasm
between the personal
fantasy and a true
seeing of invisible
facts who needs to
know please call
back leave a
message please.

Confessional Valentine

How not to be overwhelmed
by your own inadequacies
is what I infer from
Nicolas of Cusa’s ‘learned
ignorance’ which is also
a kind of secular wisdom
that unavoidable geometry class
how not to be overwhelmed
by the speculations of angles
moving from one infinity
to another and back on the
vectors of prayers and tears
nor by how it always seems
it’s the human being who
puts the poison in the well.

Sung Valentine

It looked at first
like a fat red cardinal
but it just turned into
a young red pomegranate
it looked at first
like immortal love
but it just turned into
a glass of water
it looked at first
like the one who was hiding
wanted to be seen most of all
but it just turned into
the one at the center
wanting to run away.

Elemental Valentine

It’s not always Friday
for the bees they have
their moaning in mid-winter
the neutrons and the protons
huddled like a mulberry with
the electrons racing round
the idea of a god when
one or two bees sail off
into the bluest riddled
day to fall and die
saving the hive from
having to dispose of them
or the departure of the drones
on the warmest day after mating
one thinks of all one’s bad
ideas leaving one for good
only a field where demons
and angels struggle for
our undivided attention
and complete flowering.

Missing Valentine

The sadness of poetry
and what embarrasses
and ensorcels me
and almost everyone about it
is that you can only come
for a few minutes
to a full stop of the heart
oddly just long enough
for me to miss you
though in its shadow-half
the leaves of paranoia
reveal its disappointment
long after the cause
for it has dissipated
into the outer world
where these remaining
plants and animals
are all that’s left
of the beautiful
and noble.

Darwin's Valentine

Too raucous
for the modest
life on offer
sculpted to sustain
a certain inwardness
fearing death
more than life
scrambling to survive
always on his knees
finally the plane took off
I could look up
from the pages I was reading
of a life I could
feel it lift
a bit clunky
old angel
and fly.